Radio’s podcast commitment deficit; Nine storms the Index; retail media’s power struggle
Welcome to a midweek edition of Unmade.
Today: Why is the man who many see as Australia’s best broadcaster, only 296th most popular on the Australian Podcast Ranker?
We’ve announced the schedule for this year’s Compass series. Our panel-in-the-pub, end-of-year tour kicks off in Sydney on November 3 and concludes in Hobart a fortnight later. Reflecting on 2025 and projecting into 2026, please hold the date for your city:
November 3 – Compass Sydney
November 5 – Compass Brisbane
November 10 – Compass Adelaide
November 11 – Compass Perth
November 17 – Compass Melbourne
November 18 – Compass Hobart
Unmade’s paying members get a free ticket to Compass. Your annual membership also gets you tickets to September’s REmade conference on retail media; and to October’s Unlock conference on marketing in the nighttime economy.
Radio shows have a podcast commitment problem
Tim Burrowes writes:
Another month and another edition of The Australian Podcast Ranker.
Something little talked about is the lack of correlation between radio show popularity and their position in the monthly ranker, particularly during months with a survey break.
The most extreme example in the new July numbers is that of The Christian O’Connell Show. Often Melbourne’s top rating FM show, the podcast is an entirely different matter. Today, O’Connell placed 296th on the ranker.
The ranker only goes up to 300. Another four places and he would have suffered the indignity of not appearing at all.
Not that the rest of the Melbourne FM breakfast shows did much better. Nova hosts Jason Hawkins and Lauren Phillips were at number 267. Fifi Fev & Nick, on The Fox, were at number 269.
This is where all of the daily radio shows placed within the ranker:
7 The Kyle & Jackie O Show (ARN)
40 Ben Fordham Live (Nine Radio)
61 Whateley (Sports Entertainment Network)
68 Late Night Live (ABC)
71 AM (ABC)
77 The Rush Hour with JB & Billy (Listnr)
97 Fitzy & Wippa with Kate Ritchie (Nova Entertainment)
111 Radio National Breakfast (ABC)
148 3AW Breakfast with Ross & Russel (Nine Radio)
151 3AW Mornings with Tom Elliott (Nine Radio)
161 Drive with Joel & Fletch (SEN)
164 Nightlife (ABC)
175 Mick in the Morning with Roo, Titus & Rosie (Listnr)
203 Smallzy’s Surgery (Nova Entertainment)
219 Breakfast with Vossy (SEN)
221 Triple M Breakfast with Beau, Cat and Woodsy (Listnr)
225 Jam Nation with Jonesy & Amanda (ARN)
229 Morning Glory with Matty Johns (SEN)
239 Mornings with Mark Levy (Nine Radio)
245 Lu & Jrarch (Listnr)
267 Jase & Lauren (Nova Entertainment)
269 Fifi, Fev & Nick (Listnr)
281 Drive with Jacqui Felgate (Nine Radio)
286 Carrie & Tommy (Listnr)
296 The Christian O’Connell Show (ARN)
Part, but not all, of the explanation comes in the cycle of radio ratings survey periods. There was a two week ratings break in the middle of July so most of the presenters seemed to be on holiday in Fiji, which meant little fresh content to share into the podcast feed.
But that’s not a complete excuse. The team behind The Kyle & Jackie O Show continued to pump out repackaged podcast content and took seventh place in the ranker.
That better matches audience expectations. The radio industry’s system of frequent survey breaks is already wildly out of touch with audiences, who still don’t fully understand the regularity with which their shows vanish for weeks on end.
It’s an ancient system that makes even less sense when radio is compared against other audio formats. At the very least, the audio companies owe it to their top shows to provide them with social media resource to ensure they appear in podcast feeds across the year.
Habit matters. And podcast listeners are being trained that radio shows care about them for just 41 weeks per year.
REmade panel to probe retail media’s power struggle
REmade curator Cat McGinn writes:
Retail media has been hailed as the “third wave” of advertising after print and digital, but inside organisations it remains an open question: is it a marketing channel, a sales lever, a media investment, or simply an extension of trade spend?
We’ll be trying to answer the question at REmade next month. The discussion will bring together leaders from across the ecosystem, including Janice Hoogeveen, head of marketing, Terry White Chemmart; Adam Freedman, head of brand, communications and loyalty, DigiDirect; Robbie Hills, retail media consultant and Jon Harding, co-founder, Retail Media Works.
The session will investigate one of the sector’s most contentious issues: the tug-of-war for budgets, KPIs, and accountability.
Key themes include the money trail; whether spend is flowing from brand marketing, trade budgets, or incremental retail investment, as well as examining the impact on the customer. Organisational power dynamics will also come into play, with debate over whether retail media should sit with CMOs, commercial chiefs, or dedicated standalone teams.
REmade will be held September 23, at UTS in Sydney.
Tickets for REmade are available now.
Nine on the money
Tim Burrowes resumes:
Australia’s big listed TV companies both saw a surge on the Unmade Index today with the share price of Nine jumping by 4.5% and Seven West Media by 4.8%.
The Unmade Index saw its biggest one day improvement since May.
Nine’s market capitalisation of $2.8bn is the highest the company has been since Costar announced its bid to buy the company’s majority owned real estate platform Domain back in February. Next week Nine will update the market on its full financial year numbers on the same day its $1.4bn cash from the deal drops into its bank account.
It was a rougher day for the audio industry though with Southern Cross Austereo losing 1.5% and ARN Media losing 1.1%.
Ooh Media continued its turnaround after losing 10% on the day it issued its half year results. The company’s share price grew by another 3.3% after yesterday’s 4.4% improvement.
The Unmade Index closed on 591.9 points, up by 2.4%.
More from Mumbrella…
Time to leave you to your evening.
We’ll be back tomorrow with an audio-led exploration of Hardie Grant’s acquisition of Keep Left.
Have a great day
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher – Unmade + Mumbrella
tim@unmade.media
Tim, I rarely comment as such on your reporting.
First up, I agree that broadcast radio can be called an ancient system’. But so is the Bible, our Constitution, driving on the LHS of the road etc … but they all still work well.
You report referred to the ‘daily radio shows placed within the ranker:’ The highest daily radio show was The Kyle & Jackie O Show (Listnr). My understanding is that the ranker is based over the calendar period (I hope).
Looking at Triton’s Australian Podcast Ranker for July 2025, the #1 radio show The Kyle & Jackie O Show had 386,439 Monthly Listeners (Nationally) and made 1,145,158 downloads (Nationally) of the 21 weekday K&J shows broadcast.
That indicates that the AVERAGE WEEKDAY SHOW had 54,531 during the month.
Further, with 386,439 listeners and 1,145,158 downloads during the month indicates that the listener / broadcaster ratio is 2.96 of the 21 available downloaded – i.e. about 14% of the broadcasts made.
Even further, there appears to be NO DATA OF THE DURATION of those average 2.96 listeners. If you listen for 10 minutes you are counted the same as someone who listens to all (or part of) 4 hours.
In comparison, the ‘Ancient System’ audience estimates (yes, they are estimates based on responses) are based on 15-minute blocks. In order to be qualified as a listener you must listen to at least 8 continuous minutes (i.e. > 50% of the 15-minute block) to be considered for that quarter-hour BUT NOT FOR THE ENTIRE BROADCAST. For example, if you listen to just a 15-minute block in a 4-hour broadcast you count as one-sixteenth of the broadcast’s duration.
Then across the span of the radio survey weeks it has individual consecutive weeks that are aggregated to generate the Survey Report (e.g. 6 weeks together). Therefore, across longitudinal reporting of the active duration you get a more stable basis. And then the ‘Ancient System’ its reports are based on average duration because that is how Media Agency planning is operated amongst other factors.
Hi John,
If a side effect of your recently announced and well deserved retirement is to give you more time to comment on my reporting then I’m all for it!
To clarify, my reference to the ancient system refers not to the methods used to gather the data, but to the audience outcome – their favourite shows only being on air for the 41 weeks of the year covered by the survey system.
Cheers,
Tim